My year in books – 2018 Wrap Up!!

Oh I LOVE this time of year! All the amazing blog posts and YouTube videos that recount all of the adventures that us bookworms went on throughout the year! I love seeing how much we were able to accomplish, and all of the new things that we were able to experience because of books. This is a particularly EXCITING year for me because……. drumroll please…… I finally reached triple digits in one year!!! Cue the dance party! I never thought I could really do it, but it happened! I pushed myself hard, and I am so proud that I was able to accomplish it. But I don’t think I’ll worry so much about goals next year though lol!

As I was preparing to write this post, I started looking back at the books that I read at the beginning of the year. For some of them, it feels like I read them ages ago! It was such an incredible reading year! I found a few new authors, read some books that heavily impacted my emotions, and some that were absolutely mind blowing. Here is an in depth look at my reading year in 2018:

*** Before we get into the pictures I need to mention why some spines are turned around. Any books that I don’t own a physical copy for, or have lent out, are represented by a book without the spine showing. I also forgot a stack of 10 books after I took the first picture! So not all pictures are accurate but I updated the numbers to the correct amount***

BOOKS READ IN 2018

Number of books read – 100!

Number of pages read – 37,629

Average book length – 376 pages

I technically haven’t finished 100 – but it’s guaranteed before the end of the year. I counted the two books I plan to read in this wrap up. If I compare this year to last year, I have read 18 more books than I did last year, 4,199 more pages, but the average book length went from 407 to 376. I didn’t pay too much attention to the length of a book this year, but towards the end I started to choose shorter books. I want to focus on longer books in 2019.

BOOKS BY GENRE:

1 – Horror/mystery/historical fiction – 17

2 – Contemporary – 20

3 – Science fiction – 30

4 – Fantasy – 33

The books in this picture aren’t accurate. After putting this massive stack of books away, I realized that I had forgotten a few on the table. These pictures took me over 2.5 hours from start to finish, so I wasn’t about to do it again! LOL! I ran out of room on the table so I ended up putting the horror, mystery, and historical fiction together in one stack. It was the smallest amount so I needed to make it look more full. I was really surprised to see that my sci-fi and fantasy were close to even! I was even more surprised to see that I had read so many contemporary! It didn’t seem like that many!

NEW TO ME AND READ BEFORE:

1 – New to me authors – 49

2 – Read before authors – 51

Once again, the same stack is missing – I can’t believe that I forgot the stack!!! I kept wondering where certain books were but didn’t see the missing books until the end. On side 1 we have the books from authors that I had never read before. Number 2 is authors I’ve already read something of theirs. This was a HUGE shock! Last year I had read 55 books by new authors and only 27 from authors I had previously read. I’m glad that I’m still reading a lot of new authors, but I’m also glad that I was able to finally finish a bunch of series this year!

MALE VS FEMALE AUTHORS:

1 – Male: 28

2 – Female – 58

(You’ll notice that the numbers don’t add up to the 100 books I read this year. I had to remove books that were collaborations and had both male and female authors) Yikes! This number still makes me sad! I don’t know if it’s my female nature that draws me to more female authors or what! This is quite a staggering difference. Though, I will say, that it’s a HUGE IMPROVEMENT compared to last year. In 2017 I read 67 books written by female authors and only 15 written by men. As sad as the difference is this year, i’m still happy that it’s an improvement. I hope to see an even smaller gap in 2019!

STAR RATINGS:

One thing that I completely forgot to get a visual of was star ratings. I probably have a higher than normal star rating average. I’m good at choosing books that suit me and I’m also very easy to please. So here are my star ratings (minus the 2 that I haven’t finished yet) for 2018:

5 star ratings – 42

4 star ratings – 28

3 star ratings – 21

2 star ratings – 7

There it is fellow bookworms! An in depth look at the books I read in 2018. It was a really amazing year for books! I hit triple digits, I read some amazing new authors, and some fabulous books! Looking forward to an even better year in 2019! How did you make out this year?

WOW 100 books! I strive for that number one day but have yet to accomplish it. I like how you broke your reading habits. Never thought of looking at new authors or men vs women. Would be interesting to see what I lean toward.

I also enjoy all the end of the year posts. Great idea to take photos from stacks of books instead of making graphs! It’s more original and it’s nice to see all the titles. I see you have a lot of 5-star ratings, but was is your favourite book of 2018?

So excited that you hit your 100! I thought I was the only one who read way more female authors than males. I don’t do it on purpose :).
With your new Kindle, you’re going to have to find a new representation for next year!!

I will! I’ve bought so many books for my kindle and it’s been less than 15&!! It’s going to be a surprise on Christmas morning because I can’t remember a single book I bought! Literally – not a single one 😂

wow that’s amazing! I especially love the way you incorporated stats into your pictures. I’m so jealous that you manage to read so many women authors! I have the opposite problem unfortunately, so my 2019 goal is to read more books by women! Do you have any favorite female authors you can recommend?

hmm, I personally LOVE the work of George Orwell. He has a surprisingly bigger catalog of work than most people realize. I liked “Keep the Aspidistra Flying” the best. Paul Murray is a modern author who writes tragicomedies that are really great but very long